Thank you, Humboldt County Transparency Project

It's becoming absolutely clear that the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project is worth its weight in gold. In its first true test run here on the North Coast, it's responsible for the discovery of two vote-count discrepancies. That is, two errors in how the voters' will was calculated.

To make this perfectly clear, if the transparency project were not around, the vote of Humboldt County's voters would have been inaccurately tabulated.

While in these two instances the errors did not change the election's outcome, it's certainly not hard to imagine a situation where it would have, especially in a place like Humboldt County where slim vote margins are the rule rather than the exception.

Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich is to be commended, again, for putting this system in place, and working hard to get it off the ground.

It seems strange to call these discoveries successes, but the transparency project has absolutely succeeded in making sure every vote in Humboldt County is accurately counted. We'd hope that California Secretary of State Debra Bowen is watching very closely, and as a result might even consider mandating this program across the state.

Any arguments that such steps are unnecessary have been thoroughly disproven with these two recent incidents.

What better way to make sure vote counts are accurate than to make it possible for anyone and everyone across the state to conduct their own recounts, whenever and however they choose? It smells like democracy.